“I’m fine,” he gritted out, clenching his jaw. “Let’s keep moving.”
The metal staircase creaked horribly as we made our way up the steps, and I could feel it swaying under our weight. But it held until we reached the top platform and crawled in through the broken window.
“I can’t see a thing,” muttered Zeke, pressing close to my back.
I could. The room here had the same crumbling, gutted feel of most other city buildings; cracked ceiling, peeling walls, floor strewn with rubble and trash. Looking closer, I had to fight the urge to hiss. Blank-eyed humans stared at me from the shadows of the room, some draped in rotted costumes, arms and legs missing or lying scattered on the floor. It took me a moment to realize they weren’t real. Just plastic figures made to resemble humans.
Zeke gave a start, one hand dropping to his gun. He’d seen the creepy plastic figures, too, and in the dark, with normal human vision, it might freak anyone out.
“Relax,” I told him. “They’re not real. They’re statues or something.”
Zeke shuddered and took his hand away. “I’ve seen a lot of weird things,” he muttered, shaking his head, “but I think this takes the prize. Let’s get out of here before I start seeing them in my dreams…or before they start moving.”
I glimpsed a dismembered arm on the floor, and a remark about needing a hand sprang to mind, but this wasn’t the time for jokes. We carefully picked our way across the room and opened the door into another dark, narrow hallway.
The door creaked shut behind us, plunging the corridor into darkness thicker than ink. In complete blackness, the world looked shadowy gray to my vampire sight. But at least I could still see. Zeke was edging forward with one hand outstretched, the other on the wall beside him.
“Here,” I said quietly, and took his hand. He stiffened, muscles coiled to pull back, but then relaxed with a tight nod. “Just follow my lead,” I told him, ignoring the pulse at his wrist, the beat of life through his veins. “I won’t let you fall.”
We crept through the lightless hallway, passing rooms filled with dusty boxes, racks of rotting clothes and furniture covered in plastic sheets. It was obvious the raiders didn’t use this part of the building; the dirt and plaster dust lining these hallways hadn’t been disturbed in years—except for the countless rats and mice that went scurrying away, vanishing into the walls and floor. At one point, I stepped in something soft, like mud, and looked up to see the ceiling crawling with what looked like hundreds of winged mice. I didn’t mention this to Zeke as we hurried forward, though for some bizarre reason I felt a strange kinship with the tiny grotesque creatures.
The back of the building was like a maze, with endless rooms, hallways and scattered rubble. Some of the walls had fallen in, and sometimes we had to pick our way over a section of ceiling or edge around a floor that had collapsed. Zeke kept a tight grip on my hand as we maneuvered the labyrinth, occasionally stumbling as his wounded leg gave out but for the most part keeping up with me.
As we stepped over a fallen girder, a splintering crack rang out like a gunshot, and a section of floor gave way beneath us. I grabbed wildly for the beam with one hand, keeping a tight grip on Zeke with the other, as we plummeted straight down. My fingers hit the rusty edge of the girder, latching on desperately, as the weight of Zeke’s body nearly tore my arm out of the socket.
For a moment, we dangled over empty blackness. I could hear Zeke’s panting, feel his pulse racing under my fingers. Overhead, the floorboards groaned threateningly, showering me with dust, but the girder itself didn’t move.
The weight on the end of my arm gave a strangled gasp, hand tightening around my wrist. My fingers digging into the girder slipped a fraction of an inch. “Zeke,” I gritted out, “there’s a beam right above us. If I pull you up, can you grab it?”
“I…can’t see anything,” Zeke replied, his voice tight with suppressed fear, “so you’ll have to be my eyes. Just tell me when I’m getting close.”
I half swung, half lifted him to the edge of the hole, feeling my shoulders scream in protest. “Now,” I muttered, and Zeke lashed out with his free arm, hitting the girder on his first try. The weight dragging me down vanished as Zeke grabbed the beam like a lifeline and hauled himself up.
I followed, crawling out of the hole and rolling onto my back next to Zeke, who had done the same. He was breathing hard, shaking with adrenaline, his heart crashing in his chest. I felt nothing. No pounding heartbeat, no gasping breaths, nothing. A near-death experience, and I didn’t feel a thing.